2017/4 Misty Woodland

Two things I have always had a bit of trouble photographing: misty weather and woodland. I love the dappled sunlight that you see in the woods and the patterns of the trees and plant life, but I have always struggled to get my exposure right and to capture what I’m seeing. As for mist and fog, it’s such a tricky weather condition for photography; all that whiteness and all the moisture in the air reflecting the light makes for hard work.

However, both of these things are so beautiful that I decided, one misty morning recently, to go out and work on trying to capture something decent. There is a wooded hollow not far from our house where the mist sits on winter mornings and the low sunlight is filtered through the trees. This seemed to me to be a good place to start. After quite a lot of time spent fiddling with ISO, aperture and shutter speed (and freezing my hands) I got some pretty nice results. However, when I started to edit them a little in Lightroom, I discovered a way of making the mist mistier and lifting the decent to something a bit more magical. I am not usually a fan of editing, but I do like what reducing the clarity did to these photos.

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3 comments on “2017/4 Misty Woodland”

Brava, ragazza: As I think you already know, ‘Woodland Stream’ is there winner (in my opinion, anyway) because the composition works so well: the shaft of misty sunlight leads one’s eye to the magical stream at the bottom. The other two feel a bit truncated, in terms of composition, but the first is a complete photograph. Molto amore and hi to Andy!–F&J

Welcome to the wonderful world of photo editing…I know: it’s like killing your children, but the hard fact is that, when showing work, you only are as good as your worst photograph. Also, no need to apologize about post-production tweaking, provided it is not extreme. Might as well use all the tools that digital affords you. Remember: the picture would not look that good if there were not enough information in the image to begin with. You merely are bringing out its best…FVR